The Electronic Broadsheet: all the News that fit the Display

Abstract:
Developments in screen technology and computer hardware have given us
color displays with resolutions of 2000 lines over an area the size of
a broadsheet. These displays offer a range of new possibilities and
pitfalls in electronic publishing.

This paper describes a news presentation application that explores the
possibilities of large screens in the areas of presentation metaphors,
typography, imagery, and human interaction. The program presents a
broadsheet-sized electronic newspaper to the reader, and explores the
possibilities that large screens offer. The implications of using
large screens are also discussed. The display application takes
advantage of the dynamic nature of a computer screen. Much of the
newspaper metaphor has been preserved, while the computer invites
instant updates and user participation.

The large monitor has proved an excellent device for electronic
newspapers as well as a general purpose X11 workstation. At 2000 lines
we are reaching the threshold of paper-like access to information.
Although our application is an electronic newspaper, the results are
relevant to any transition from paper to high-resolution dynamic
displays.

Introduction

Recent advances in display technology include the
development of both large and flat displays: CRT technology is
approaching laser printer resolution; flat screen technologies are
making rapid strides, mostly due to the pop ularity of portable
displays and the perceived attractiveness of a large flat screen
television. Such technologies enable one to rethink the way in which
electronic information is accessed.

Figure 1: The large
monitor as it's being used today.

A broadsheet-sized color monitor has been used as the primary
display on one of our workstations for more than two years. The
display has four times more pixels than an average X11 workstation,
and it is used differently. The difference cannot be measured in
square centimeters only; when using the large display, screen space
management shifts emphasis from screen area conservation to screen
overview. Scale becomes available as a design element. Mechanisms such
as peripheral vision become available as a communication channel
[Mollitor 90]. See figure 2. At the same time, increased display size
and density can be problematic, for example, increasing the
possibility of competition for the user's attention.

Figure 2: The large
screen leaves more of the screen surface in the peripheral vision--a
challenge and opportunity. The large screen is compared with a
standard workstation and PC display.

Through the X11 window system, the screen gives access to all
standard computer applications, e.g., electronic mail, word
processors, drawing programs, and games-lots of them! Of special
interest is the use of the monitor to present news in electronic
form-the screen's similarities with a newspaper front page makes the
newspaper format a natural starting point.

Digital news

Most people prefer to receive their news on printed paper instead of
using electronic sources and computer displays. The paper-based
version is cheap er, it's easier to fold over a breakfast table, and
it's illustrated. The front page gives readers an instant overview
over the most important stories, and the headlines make it possible to
scan large amounts of information quickly. Paper-based news
distribution has a long tradition and centuries of experience stand
behind today's formats. Pages, headlines, columns, and fonts have been
tuned in form and function. They all are a part of a user-friendly and
universally accepted product [Gurtler 84].

Current screen-based news presentation lacks many of these
properties. Limitations in display technology have barred the
presentation of a full-sized page with attractive text and images of
acceptable quality. The single biggest obstacle for computer displays
to compete with paper is the physical proper ties of the media. While
the resolution of computer displays begin to rival paper for the first
time, no known display technology approaches all properties of
paper-even if we extrapolate ten or twenty years ahead. Therefore, in
or der to compete with paper, a screen-based electronic newspaper must
offer functionality not available in traditional newsprint, e.g.
personalization, dynamics, user participation, and navigation.

Context

Over the past years the Electronic Publishing Group in the MIT Media
Lab oratory has been conducting a series of media experiments that
explore personalized newscasts. These projects, which address issues
of content analysis, user modeling, data representation and
distribution, and presentation, are described in [Lippman 86],
[Lippman, Bender 87], and [Bender, Chesnais 88] and are collectively
referred to as "NewsPeek". The most recent project, "Newspace" is an
attempt to take advantage of advances in display technology to create
an electronic newspaper that is scalable onto a wide range of display
devices [Bender et al. 91]. The project addresses news gathering,
manipulation, and presentation; The Electronic Broadsheet is the
presentation module for a large display under the Newspace project.

Other projects [Hoffert, Gretsch 91] [Erickson, Salomon 91], in
addition to the Newspeek projects, have also taken news in digital
form and used computer screens for presentation. The innovation in
this project is the size and nature of the screen; we explore the
impact large screens have on electronic information presentation.

Organization of this paper

Section 1 discusses traditional interfaces to newspapers and
computers, and how an electronic newspaper can take advantage of both.
The rest of the paper describes resources currently available and how
the Electronic Broadsheet was implemented under current constraints.
We conclude with observations about the potential for success and
failure of very high resolution displays. The discussion is based upon
the authors' experiences with both the electronic newspaper
application, and the scaled up version of the X11 window system in
which it is couched.

Information interfaces

The user interface of newspapers has been developed and standardized
throughout centuries. Despite sociological differences, publishers and
editors from different parts of the world can meet to discuss the
content, role, and technology of newspapers-just as readers from
different parts of the world can pick up a local paper and immediately
know how to read it if the written language is known. The different
elements of the newspaper interface are collectively known as the
"newspaper metaphor".

The newspaper interface

The basic building blocks of the newspaper (headlines, columns, the
name plate, front page etc.) turn into an advanced user interface when
skilled editors and typographers collaborate on the product. When
preparing the news paper, and especially the front page, editors
process the information to accommodate all readers. By scanning the
front page, the reader can get an overview of the most important
issues in a matter of seconds. Large quantities of news can be
searched with little or no predetermined focus. The process of
scanning helps the user to uncover and read articles of interest, with
out incurring significant overhead on the part of the reader either in
terms of time or effort. Minimum effort is required to digest 10% of
the print, and there is little penalty in skipping the remaining 90%.

Simply by switching from scanning to reading, the user is able to
change modality from overview to detail. The front page is your menu
in which the selections are available immediately. If the reader finds
that the wrong selection was made, i.e., the wrong article is being
read, the menu is still there to choose from.

The newspaper is a static medium for one way communication only.
Still, by turning to a section page a reader can drastically change
the content of the page being looked at. The stories on the page
become more specialized, and in one sense the reader has interacted
with the editors of the newspaper. By turning to the section, the
reader requests more information, and the editor provides more
coverage. Of course, the interaction is predefined and limited to the
content of the newspaper edition.

Newspapers provide a facile and forgiving interface by not
demanding anything from the reader, and they update themselves without
requests. It's a forgiving interface; even if a subscriber ignores the
paper for a week, the journalists and editors will still produce new
editions.

The computer interface

There are fundamental differences between the newspaper interface and
that of the usual computer information retrieval system. Computers
offer largely sequential access under direct control of the user. No
assumptions are made by such systems as to the user's intent,
therefore the presentation of the data is not tightly coupled to its
retrieval.

Computer interfaces also make use of menus of various kinds where
the user chooses a specific element from a list, after which the
computer executes the selection. Typographical cues are rarely used to
differentiate items. If the computer performs a successful search, the
result is displayed on a small screen with few typographical clues.
Then the computer requires the user to issue several commands, like
pan or scroll, to show the full result of the retrieval. In comparison
with a newspaper front page, the computer menu falls short.

Modern computer programs are event-driven, i.e., nothing will
happen unless the user issues commands, e.g., a mouse click or button
press. The interface keeps the user active and in control, and if the
user is inactive, most computer programs will remain passive. Editions
of a newspaper, in comparison, will keep coming without user
feedback.

While newspapers are a universally accepted and understood product,
computer code requires specific hardware and specific versions of the system
software to run properly. The user interface of computer programs varies
enormously from system to system. Even programs based on the popular
"desktop metaphor" cannot be interchanged freely-neither by computers
nor humans.

Benefits from using dynamic displays

As we have seen, traditional newspapers often compare favorably with hi-
tech information systems. Trying to replicate the best parts of the newspaper
metaphor while taking advantage of dynamic displays is an important goal
in The Electronic Broadsheet.

The newspaper format has its shortcomings. Newsprint is a static
medium. After the ink is put on paper it doesn't move-except onto the
fingers of the reader. This has two important implications: articles
don't get updated and the medium can't show moving pictures.

By entering the electronic domain, newspapers can add continuous
updates and video sequences to the presentation. Digital technology
also opens for other enhancements, e.g., personalization of content,
two-way communication between information producer and consumer and
better navigational clues. These benefits apply not only to the
presentation of news, but also to other forms of screen-based
electronic publishing. See [Lie 91] for a more thorough discussion.

From pixels to pages

The Electronic Broadsheet is an attempt to transcode the newspaper
metaphor into an electronic medium using state-of-the-art presentation
technology. The following chapter describes and evaluates the hardware
and software components involved in building pages from pixels.
Emphasis is put on issues where displays differ from paper.

The monitor

The continuously advancing technology has provided us with
"paper-like" displays that we claim can start competing with
newsprint. The monitor used in the project is a color CRT showing 2048
* 2048 pixels on a 20" * 20" (508 * 508 mm) viewing area. This is
almost as high as a broadsheet newspaper and a little wider. The image
consists of 4 million pixels and is refreshed at 60Hz.

When seeing the display for the first time most people are struck
by its size and resolution. The monitor frame measures 694 * 673 * 760
mm (w/h/d) and weights ca 98 kg [SONY 89]. To make this huge piece of
glass and metal as flexible and portable as paper is impossible; at
least three people are required to move it. It is a unique device, but
its physical properties leave much to be desired. It may be suitable
for a Chinese wall newspaper, but it will not fit on your desktop.

Merely considering the technical specifications, it may not be
clear that the display really is able to take on newsprint with regard
to legibility. A resolution of 2k over 20" yields around 100 dots per
inch (dpi). A typical laser print er outputs 300dpi. To close this gap
a technology known as soft fonts is used to render all text.

Soft fonts

Soft fonts, also known as fuzzy fonts, antialiased fonts or grayscale
fonts in troduce a new way of thinking about text on computer displays
[Negroponte 80] [Warnock 80] [Schmandt 80] [Bigelow, Day 83]. The
monitor is no longer considered a discrete device with a fixed matrix
driving it. Instead, the characters are scaled onto a continuous
space; any partly covered pixel by the edge of a character is
quantized into a grayscale value. Soft fonts don't improve resolution,
but rather, improve addressability of the existing resolu tion. This
is important to properly render the letter forms, as well as position
the letter forms on the display. Ergonomic studies show that they are
easier to read [Bender et al. 87], and without the use of soft fonts
on the display it would be much harder to claim competitiveness with
paper.

Legibility vs. text density

A dilemma typographers face when laying out text is legibility vs.
text density. Newspapers opt for high text density while legibility
suffers. A good example is the front page of NYT [Merill 80]. There is
a minimum of white space, and headline fonts are often condensed.
Margins are minimal, and the overall impression is "dark". When
presenting news on a dynamic display, space comes cheaper than on
paper. The Electronic Broadsheet can afford to emphasize legibility
instead of maximizing text density. One example of this is how
paragraphs are displayed. While newspapers break paragraphs to align
columns and minimize white space, our electronic version always
display paragraphs in one piece. This idea, used in the "SuperBook"
project [Egan et al. 89], sacrifices real-estate for legibility.
Although readers always have accepted split paragraphs, we believe the
assumed improvement in legibility is worth the wasted space. It also
gives pages a "lighter" look.

Automating the layout process

The layout of a newspaper is designed to attract readership and to
optimize the newspaper's effectiveness in presenting information.
Rules and conventions have evolved over the years and almost all
newspapers share well-established layout principles. The large screen
allows for the use of newspaper layout techniques on a computer
display.

Newspaper layout was one of the first newspaper processes automated
with the help of computers. The application is obvious and the market
is large. The problem is reasonably constrained; the program is given
a set of news articles and advertisements. Advertisements are placed
according to one set of rules, while news articles are placed in the
remaining space (the "newshole") according to another set of rules.
Since The Electronic Broadsheet does not contain advertisements, we do
not discuss them. Without the ads the problem is surprisingly similar
to the computer game Tetris; blocks are to be placed to minimize open
holes.

The Electronic Broadsheet tries to use elements from traditional
page layout, but the process of laying out the pages is very
different. Paper-based newspapers are issued in discrete editions,
while the electronic page continuously adds new articles. Accordingly,
old or less important articles have to be removed and this complicates
the shape of the newshole.

The use of color

One property of paper, and especially newspaper pulp, is that it
yellows when exposed to light. This characteristic feature is used to
indicate to the reader how long an article has been on display; a map
of the pages represent each article with an icon faded relative to its
age. The map also conveys the given importance of each article.
Jacobson and Bender [Jacobson, Bender 90] report that when contrast of
value is low between foreground and background colors (dyads), energy
is controlled by hue alignment. Complementary dyads were found useful
as highlights. Monochrome dyads did not get the user's attention. On
the map, important articles are given a border using a hue
complementary to the icon color in order to draw the user's attention.
Less important articles are given a border using the same hue as the
icon color. For a more thorough discussion on the map and the use of
colors see [Lie 91].

The rendered pages

Having composed the pages, the Electronic Broadsheet is now ready to
offer the reader pages that hopefully are visually and intellectually
fulfilling. The reader is offered a range of sections, i.e. pages
devoted to a particular subject, in addition to the front page. As the
reader navigates through the different pages, the computer will try to
track how much time is spent on each article. This information is
passed over to the article selection module, which dynamically updates
each reader's selection criteria. It is beyond the scope of this paper
to describe the news selection mechanisms, see [Bender et al. 91]
[Orwant 91] for a more thorough discussion.

Are metaphors scalable?

Running 1k software on 2k displays is suboptimal. This section
provides some guidelines for making applications that take advantage
of the large medium.

One of the stated goals of the X window system is to avoid making user
interface policy decisions. Instead, X provides a rich set of mechanisms for
implementing a variety of user interfaces-in our case the newspaper meta
phor. Also, using X made a variety of software available for immediate use-
editors, terminal emulators, window managers and games to name some of
the categories. However, most of these programs has been written for and on
1k screens.

One example is programs that put a window in the center of the
screen on purpose to catch the attention of the user. They will
probably succeed on a 1k display, but the same is not true for a
larger screen. The window is more like ly to be missed due to its
relatively smaller size. Instead of using absolute locations for new
windows, they should be positioned relative to related windows.

Some applications use sound to signal errors or special events. The
infamous "bell" sound (ASCII character 7) may have worked well when
termi nals were physical devices and not a window among several other.
The non- spatial bell sound is hard to trace, and the more
applications, the harder it gets for the user.

Applications should always be aware of the environment they are a part
of. They should know the size and type of screen they are being
displayed on, and thy should expect a fair competition for the
available resources. Grabbing the entire screen is antisocial behavior
and a programs that fail to use a reasonable font size is less than
optimal.

The user's attention is also a scarce resource that applications
should com pete for. Programs should never insist or expect getting
the full attention of the user, but should indicate, perhaps through
visual cues in the peripheral vision, that new data is available or
input is requested. Correspondingly, programs should never make
assumptions about what the user is looking at. In the context of
newspapers, the word "tabloid" carries two meanings: condensed size
and a journalistic style. The close link between the two indicate that
metaphors don't scale easily. The same is true for computer screens.
E.g., the desktop metaphor does not scale easily onto a large screen:
finding the cursor proves difficult and dragging icons across the
screen suddenly requires planning ahead. Making the cursor larger and
faster are inadequate solution. While it is terrific to have an Emacs
buffer which can display 200 lines of text, it is annoying to have to
hunt for the cursor.

Conclusion

At 2000 lines of resolution, computer displays start to compete with news
print in size and legibility. Since the newspaper has had centuries to develop
effective mechanisms for navigating large databases displayed on dense,
high resolution displays, it is not surprising that many techniques, such as
"front page" and "sections" are effective when directly translated into elec
tronic form. We can further enhance the utility of the display by adding dy
namic use of color contrast, motion and sound. On the other hand, a window
system like X11 needs serious rethinking when scaled up by a factor of 4. The
typical window managers neither take advantage of the additional resource,
e.g. avoiding overlapping windows when possible, nor do they have any
framework for the consistent application of color, screen position or motion
as means of helping the user navigate.

Augmented by dynamic screen updates, the Electronic Broadsheet takes
on paper-based news distribution; it handles all aspects of screen-based
news presentation from low-level typesetting to multi-page layout and user
interactivity.

The ultimate evaluation of a newspaper is done by the readers. For the
Electronic Broadsheet, the number of potential subscribers is strictly limited
by the number of 2k monitors in the world-a number that is still very low.